‘Luhansk Will Never Be The Same Again’: In Kyiv, A Blogger Reflects On His Native City

06.08.2014
By RFE/RL’s Russian Service
Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
Based on an interview by RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Translated by Luke Johnson in Washington.

Sergei Ivanov

Amid the two-month occupation by separatist forces in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk and subsequent military campaign by the central government, thousands have fled for other parts of Ukraine. The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 10,000 civilians have been internally displaced after the occupation of Crimea by Russian forces and subsequent fighting in eastern Ukraine.

At least one-third of them are children, and some of them have been displaced twice after fleeing Crimea for the east, according to the UNHCR. Forty-five percent of them have settled in the center of the country, while 26 percent went to western Ukraine. As Maxim Eristavi writes in “The New Republic,”the problem is invisible since internally displaced people blend in easily in…